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I sat pondering on what ive achieved in my 27 years and realised that anything ive ever said I wanted to do or wanted to have I have managed to achieve.

Last year after 10 years in catering I completely changed career and last week I achieved a distinction in painting and decorating. This got me thinking that since I always achieve goals I set myself what could I do next....

Thus the Millionaire challenge!

So phase 1 is opening a savings account and getting money building up...

I work for myself so have a bit of control over my earnings, we have 1 property that we rent out and my husband has a decent (secure) job.

My aim is to get to the million mark by the age of 40 (im 27 now)

So how many of you think im mad and its impossible and how many of you think i'll do it and have ideas to help me

Couple interesting ideas! I've heard about the Naked Trader book but haven't read it. Nothing worse then children to hold you back - but wouldn't trade them for the world lol.

I've been a bit down recently as I wanted to go back to work in September but had no way of actually going. There is a serious lack of child minders in the area who pick up from my kids school - so the only real option is to transfer them to another school that does breakfast and after school club - but even then, as my youngest is still in Nursery till 2018 they don't normally accept Nursery children to the before/after school club....but in future if I was working 9-5 sort of hours this could be the difference between £10 a day in CC or £30 by not having after school club and using a childminder.

I kept saying I wouldn't want to give up my evenings though, and then I could only work from 6pm+ when Husband got home but I realised it might actually be a decent way to go about it. I've applied for a job that starts at 5pm. I can drop kids off at MIL's round the corner, and for the sake of an hour till my Husband gets home it would work really well and I know she'd be on board. (She can't pick up or drop off at school either due to her own school runs)

It's only 3 days a week and 16 hours, so from September I'd get the full 30 hours childcare during the week too - this would allow me to study all day whilst the kids are at school, pick them up, go to work and still have weekends and 2 evenings free.

If I don't get the job, I'm going to wait till August/September and start looking properly for an evening job (as again then I'd have the 30 hours childcare to work round the degree) but if I get an interview I'd be over the moon...just trying not to get my hopes up. Nothing worse then wanting to work but not being able to!

As for the above about my Dad, I've really thought about it and decided it might not be the best thing to do. First off were at a crucial stage that saving up to 6k would cripple us - and the 'opportunity cost' of this would be quite high. Second as above I'm not a fan of how he does things, and third if we got 50% enough to buy a 2nd house, I'm sure he'd put the other 50% in and do it that way on my own terms (within reason)

Another reason for wanting a job also, is so we can re-mortgage to get cash out of this property to put towards the next one too. Hopefully after renovations are done here, it will be worth 110k and we can take a chunk out to pay the deposit on the next house.

Lastly latest news, not sure if I said before but the bathroom renovations were put on a 0% credit card - were paying a small amount a month but enough to pay it off before the 0% ends.

Just applied for a Santander CC on 0% interest and got a 2.5k limit too. I'm going to start getting the money off this in cash for two reasons, one because our EF is not that high (and another story we've just had to shell out £800 on a new car) and I want some cash available incase the boiler breaks down. and to get some interest off it...essentially stoozing I think it's called.

I'm going to open a regular savings account with Santander as soon as I can get into town (kids are ill AGAIN ...chicken pox with 1 I think the other 1 is coming down with it as he's been sick/coughing but might be a different bug?!) and you can max put in £200 a month so going to set that up to come out our normal monthly income...we should easily be able to afford to do that assuming nothing changes and it can be a bit of a nest egg and the other £2,500 when we get it off the CC I'm not sure about but I'm thinking something easy access or potentially going to pay the other £1,150 off so the debt is all in one place, but currently the £1,150 is 0% so not sure if this is a wise move.

Sounds a bit risky, and I guess it is but as long as we're smart about it all will go well

ETA: When I say 'get cash off' I mean using it to buy petrol / food that we normally would have purchased and saving the actual cash. Just wanted to clear that up.

I've been a bit busy the last few weeks, am drawing together a few people to get my long term business idea off the ground. The plan is there will be 3-5 of us at board level so that there doesn't need to be too much of a time commitment from anyone but we can keep track of everything and grow it.

I have to sit down with my employer in the next few weeks as it is coming up to the end of my trial period... considering the way it is going they are going to have to drastically increase my wage! I'm going to hold out for a minimum of £1-1.5k extra per month as I am getting job offers in that region on an almost weekly basis.

I'm also busy planning a smallholding... it has been a long term dream of mine to live off the land and the business that I'm in means that if I can grow ingredients I can produce a high value product at much lower costs than those who have to buy it in.

Welcome Vinny, looks as though you have made a good start already, I am interested in investing but at the moment I don't have anything spare. I have a couple of blogs I'd like to monetise at some point.

Kaya, good idea to go with your gut instincts re your Dad's property proposal. Fingers crossed you get the job!

Chesapeake, your business idea sounds interesting- and I love the small holding idea too.

This last few weeks has been very expensive for me as I have had lots of vet bills for my old lady (20 year old cat) and she now has to have renal food which, of course, is over twice as expensive (plus medication and regular tests).

I have also had problems with my car- initially it looked as though the head gasket had gone but it is a water leak- still going to cost me around £300 though after £180 spent a couple of weeks ago.

I am trying to build up an emergency fund but it's not happening! I have had a little blow in that one of my long term tenants has given notice- still waiting for a valuation from the other property.

On the plus side my guides are on Kin dl e and starting to sell. I also have an idea for a gift box around one of my interests so am aiming to dip my toe in cheaply then reinvest any profits.

Stepho. Sorry to hear about your set backs re your car and the vet bills. These things happen I'm afraid but just keep, plugging away and you will get there.

Remember it's a marathon, not a sprint.

I am currently reading the Naked Trader too. Only just started but it looks interesting.

In the meantime I have decided to dip my toe in investing and have allocated £2100 to Mutual Funds. My son has chosen and is managing them them for me. They have made a 1.2 per cent increase since Tuesday.

A good start to March. I'm 3 weeks into a new role and it's the first job since university that I'm actually enjoying. It's Monday tomorrow and, although I would of course love to stay at home and drink cocktails, I'm not dreading the thought of work in general any more!

Just had a rebate due to being emergency taxed last month (£400) and found out I was due back £300 from an old pension they had to shut down from 2006 (not worth moving this small amount so I paid off debt with it).

Congrats on the increase already LL, I'm currently paying £10-20 weekly into an S&S isa. Despite saving for a mortgage, I like to think I'd spend the tenner on coffee if I didn't do it and it's a nice intro to investment. Going to ramp it up significantly once I'm on the property ladder. Only 30, so I have years of potential compound interest to make the most of!

Bmth great news about the job. I too would love to sit sipping cocktails but I'm trying to be sensible (for once) and lose some weight.

I Love the idea of investing your "coffee money". True MSE style. Martin would be impressed. And yes it's the dribs and drabs that really add up.

My small Change jar needs emptying but that will be spending money for my holiday in May so I'm hanging on for a bit.

My £2100 investment was similar thinking.

I recently saw a holiday advertised and thought it was a great bargain. It was - it was sold out before I could book. I thought well I'm going on holiday in May anyway, don't be greedy, you don't NEED another holiday!!!!

So before I had chance to be tempted again, I invested it instead.

Nice bright sunny day so going to get out and about. I do need to balance my accounts etc and do some transfers but can do that tonight.

Thanks LL- hopefully the car will not cost as much as I first thought as it is apparently a water leak, not the head gasket.

Well I was supposed to be going to Limoges for a couple of days with my mum today- but thanks to the baggage handler strike all flights have been cancelled so we won't be going!

We are having a spa break in a hotel not too far away instead for one night, it was a special deal on Travelzoo- evening meal and breakfast included for the cost of the flights which will be refunded so very MSE!

I took this week off work so gives me some free time to work on finances, decluttering and ebay the stuff I don't need- be ruthless!!

Just done the month end figures and I managed to save 50 per cent of my net income for the month. Let's see if I can do the same for March and April.

Then holiday in May and then back to it again over the summer.

Hopefully after my holiday I will then start selling some of the jewellery and bric a brac that's cluttering up the cupboards.

stepho....enjoy your spa break.

Btw - Kaya I meant to say I think you've made the decision re your dad. If you have doubts it's best not to proceed.

Sharing financial/business arrangements with family can be problematical if you aren't careful and even if you are things can still go horribly wrong.

(As I'm finding out with my parents estate.......but that's a whole new thread right there.....so I won't bore you all. Suffice it to say I have placed everything in the hands of the solicitors and have walked away..........much less stressful, he will more than earn his fee on this one).

I have read through the whole thread and plan to join the challenge I currently have £1700 in overdrafts and £500 on a credit card. I also have £3K on a loan and about £3.5K on a car but working towards paying it off.

I see passive income as a great way to increase my income, I used to have my own business but ill health ruined that. I am better now so starting another it's just so far a struggle to get my first customer after the restart.

I love how ambitious you all are & looking forward to the next updates.

Have been busy since last checked in as we are in the early stages of getting a premises for a bar and restaurant (the idea is a lot more interesting than than, but that's the gist of it).
Massive, beautiful building, needs lots of work, but that's what we like! Inside and outside will have aprox 200 covers for food, and there is hopefully something extra which will add another revenue stream, this is one of my ideas I always have and never normally get to implement as someone else gets there before me. It also has the possibility for letting rooms, but that's something we will look into later.

This new business will mean a house move to a new area, it is commutable but decided we would rather spend that extra time where we would be travelling, on us.
Going to turn our current home into a BTL, which was always the plan, but feels strange to think of renting our home, our first BTL never felt like that as was always purchased as a business.

My other business idea is still going through development, hopefully we will have finalised the design Sept time, then its off to factories...

Thanks for the advice, I will try reword the homepage to help get a higher ranking. Do ou know if the same can be done for images?

Has anbody on here done any website to website pier advertising? I was told that its a good way to direct clients. So an example might be that a joiners site might have a link to a local painters site and vice versa. if you are having a full refurb of a house then you maybe need both. If you have done this does it seem to help?

Hey Jacka87, While you've received some advice about how to get your website more traffic about including more keywords, this is fine but not strictly as simple. You need a good keyword density yes but you do not want to go overkill on what you put. It still needs to read well. I think first off make sure all your on page seo is done. Google will be your main source of traffic if you do not want to spend anything. They look for quality content so make sure you have some decent information about what you do, ofcourse include some of your keywords and put down the business contact details, have a sitemap etc etc. I personally do not recommend getting links from other websites that do not relate to exactly what you do, Google will most likely see this an unnatural and will not like it. If it's a restaurant website linking to yours about where it sources it's fudge then great but if not leave it. If you do want links from un-relatable places make sure the links are no-follow.

There's so much to say when it comes to getting more traffic from free sources. Research on how to do on-page seo, easy if your on a CMS like Wordpress etc. Use other methods of free traffic like posting on relatable forums, using Social media like Facebook by posting to relatable groups and having a Facebook page. Even use sources like Gumtree etc and make free ads. Literally scratching the surface but 1) Check and learn about on page seo 2) Look for alternative ways like I've mentioned for getting traffic 3) If you get links make sure they are relatable, if not make sure they are no follow. 4) You probably want to do some keyword research to find out exactly what you want to be aiming for, Go to Adwords for the Keyword Planner.

There's so much content out there about generating traffic for free so just do a Google search, Get a cup of tea and just read for a few hours haha! Best of luck!

As for TinkTay84, Yes you can make a million. Didn't read all the posts so not sure if you mean a million cash or including assets. Best way is to focus on your business or another business, whichever would have the potential to make that kind of money. A million is no longer a massive amount like it used to be, especially in 13 years it will be worth less that what it is now. Yes a million is still a lot but you get my point

The rental property is great, continue with that and try and get another. Unfortunately you are dealing with the extra stamp duty now but as long as your rental covers the mortgage and maybe makes you a little extra, it's the overall property value that will make you the money. So maybe instead of paying off your mortgage, use that money for a Buy to let deposit or something else. You want your money to work hard for you and paying off the mortgage (although smart) might not be the best if you want to make money.

I joined a wee while ago but as yet haven't had a good look at my finances. I'm 42 at the minute and I'm hoping to retire at 55. I need to look into the pension I currently have and see how much is in there but I'll need to do a bit of research first cause to be honest I have no clue about pensions or how they work so this is something I need to rectify.

I have looked a wee bit into our mortgage situation. Home we currently live in is on a repayment mortgage only and house is probably worse less than we owe we are paying over what we supposed to each month to try to reduce this a bit but on the up side I own another property with quite a lot of equity in it so this should cancel out the mortgage on our current home. Given this should we continue paying extra on our current mortgage or should we save this instead? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I suppose the best way is to look at how you can make your extra money work hardest, so maybe look at interest rates. How much could your savings earn, versus how much you are paying in mortgage interest.

Totally depends what you're going to use the money for instead of paying off your mortgage. If your going to use it for something that would make you more money like saving for another deposit then yes save the money. If your not going to use the money for anything just pay off the mortgage. I'd personally pay the minimum amount on the mortgage and use the additional money for something else that would make me more than just owning more equity in the house.

As above, I wouldn't worry to much about being in neg eq if you have no plans to sell, as long as you are on a repayment mortagage and happy to live where you are then eventually it will work out, but saying that whilst the interest rates are low now they are likey to rise and essentially if you are only 'gaining' 2% interest - it may potentially work out better in the long run when it rises (although, you could always invest it at a higher interest rate till the interest rate does rise)

Beyond stressed atm. Week 1 I had youngest off with chicken pox, Week 2 they was back at school, Week 3 eldest had CP and now Week 4, they both have sickness bugs (although youngest has recovered as they both came down with it Friday, Eldest has just thrown up again...4 days and counting...)

On top of this, our dish washer broke - I was determinded to just wash the pots but after washing the pots 3 times a day and having the kitchen a constance mess I caved. Now, right in the middle of the sickness bug - the washing machine is now broke. So I have all these things I desperatly need washing that I can't, guess there is nothing for it but a trip up to currys tonight....

And to add mountain on mole hill, my Husband went into an unarranged overdraft and we've been charged £75. This was for the sake of 4-5 transactions and a few days of being in an overdraft of around -£20-30... we have this in savings but it was either he genuinly didn't notice, or he didn't want to admit he had over spent (we have seperate spending accounts with X going into it weekly) but either way it's a case of £500 down in the past week or two...

Just so annoying as we were finally in a good position looking forward and then the car broke down, dish washer and now follows the washing machine.... + bank payments + along with kids being ill!!!

I'm quite happy as I've been debating going to the gym for a while but I found an excercise bike for £10 on gumtree and I've slowly built myself up to do 30min a day. I could barely do 2-3min the first time I got on it. The idea was to build myself up to the gym (ironically) but I'm quite content with it and it saves paying out monthly and finding time to go.

Not been easy but things are looking a bit better and hopefully got another final payment for the photography business going in so business account is reasonably healthly...

Hubbie managed to fix the washing machine too so saved us the £200.

Just pushing forward on my degree and got a few weddings close together coming up so going to focus on that.

I'm a bit sad and I've called it 'operation stabilize' and the plan now is simply to get the E/Fund filled, car fund for 2018 filled (to pay insurance/extra repairs etc) and xmas fund for 2017 filled. Essentially putting myself in a good position going forward that I have spare money behind me and any big things ready to be paid off - then I can start putting money aside for investments.

Kaya..... isnt sad at all. It's a good idea to "stabilise". Thats what I have been doing. I have been taking a breather and taking stock.

It has given me time to think about my next move, whilst resting, recouping my energy and making sure that I have a good solid financial foundation on which to build.

Well done on the exercise bike.

The gym membership is only for one year until I can buy a house with room for my own mini gym. Plus I want to swim regularaly for a while.

I doubt that I will be able to afford a house with a pool just yet.....one day perhaps. . I shall have to make do with a hot tub for starters. space for a mini gym and hot tub are on my wish for my next house.

I am really enjoying my sabbatical - reading, pottering, getting out and about, socialisinG And entertaining and just generally relaxing and having fun. Just 5 wEeks until my cruise.

Have to stop typing now my I pad is playing up. Need a new computer......

I'm glad that you're all still working hard on the millionaire plan. I've got some very important negotiations coming up in the next fortnight, I might be able to land a great job on nearly double my current salary. I've also been offered some more consultancy worth a couple of grand.

Once we've started a car fund, emergency fund, wedding fund and a mortgage fund we should be in a good place

I've decided I'm going to buy some land (15 acres+) and run several businesses from it. All I need is to spend the next 5yrs saving every penny haha.

I'm back after a few years away. Saved up £11k with my ex, then lost it all again due to another redundancy and landlord selling up. Moved across the country and got another job. Still only just above minimum wage (that seems to be all I will ever earn), but I've really got into investment over the last few years and have managed to make back that £11k (on my own) plus more while earning next to nothing. I find it helps to focus on my 'breathing salary' (i.e. how much I earn via passive income just by breathing) rather than a PAYE one, as the latter never seems to go up much and as a recession graduate I don't trust that I will always have a regular salary.

I've now got £0 in debt and around £17,250 in various forms of savings/investments and daily breathing salary (DBS) is £1.20. Still no where near to the million mark, but when I look at my debt and asset charts over the last decade it doesn't seem so bad. The DBS is increasing at a faster rate each month now and I'm starting to understand what they mean by 'money makes money'!

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